#superstar: the karen carpenter story

[mangle-my-mind]

Pictures from the MoMI Todd Haynes Retrospective

@silverfactory and I went to the Museum of the Moving Image for a (you guessed it) Velvet Goldmine screening, which was fantastic as always. The screening was part of a Todd Haynes retrospective series, but they also have a small exhibit dedicated to his image books, drawings, and production material from some of his films. Here are a few pictures I took while we were there!

The Velvet Goldmine section. At the top is one of the image books for the film. Todd Haynes puts together these books for all of his films with visual inspiration for the project. @silverfactory and I were SO disappointed we couldn't flip through the book, but it was super neat seeing it in person!

The initial concept for the film (what kind of a title is Star Star lol) and some art to go along with it. I didn't know how skilled Todd Haynes is in visual art like this - all the drawings throughout the exhibit are his!

Script and storyboard moments - The Kiss, Arthur's room, Young Jack Fairy scenes

Some more Todd Haynes art, including his ideas for promotional film content

The script for Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story, and a doll in one of the original Karen costumes!

A concept description and storyboard for I'm Not There

An original People magazine featuring Mary Kay Letourneau and a prop People magazine from May December

[amatesura]

Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (1987) | dir. Todd Haynes

[cancmbyn]

An interesting read and reminder of Todd Haynes’ early work using Barbies; Very much in contrast with Greta’s recent film.

Trigger warning for anorexia and body images issues within.

Link to the film

[erstwhile-punk-guerito]

[lascenizas]

The Last Movie I Watched...

Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (1987, Dir.: Todd Haynes)

[itsblosseybitch]

My poster for the Todd Haynes cult film, Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story.

[i-am-made-out-of-bees]

Fun double feature idea!

[thesoftestcowboy]

i honestly dont give a shit about which current film people are watching etc etc but

everyone being all ohhh if u dont wanna see b/arbie you obviously HATE FUN!!1 (which is literally i take ive read on here. and lets be real, the mindset is applied to literally anything these days) and it's like. okay orrrr maybe people just have different tastes (i literally never played with b/arbies and just dont care)

but also i did so much reading on mattel and the b/arbie branding and the feminist discourse surrounding it all in like 2020 (for unrelated reasons) and the whole discourse just confirms my personal conclusions and opinions on it. both on positive/neutral aspects (peoples personal relationships with b/arbie as a toy and how kids actually subvert stereotyping in unexpected ways are really interesting) and negative aspects (tldr: fuck mattel)

like. this could be a fun discussion but i despise the discourse so lets just pretend i never said anything

[bonebrunch]

ëd streaming 🤍

I constantly update this.

Netflix:

To the B0ne

Black Swan

Supermodel Me: Revolution

Malcolm & Marie

Everything Now

Hulu:

Girl, Interrupted

Thirteen

America's Next Top Model

Skins UK

My 600 lb Life

1000 lb Sisters

Max:

My 600 lb Life

1000 lb Sisters

Fast Food Nation

The W8 of the Nation

Th!n

Euphoria

Prime:

Supersize vs Supersk!nny

Sharing the Secret

Tubi:

Look Away

Th!nsp!ration

Honey Sickness

The Wasting

Shapeless

Little Miss Perfect

Sharing the Secret

Kate's Secret

Jennifer's Body

Freevee:

The Biggest Loser channel

Pluto TV:

F@T: A Documentary

Pluto Competition channel

Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders channel

Survivor channel

The Amazing Race channel

The Challenge channel

YouTube:

Supersize vs Supersk!nny

My Big F@t Di3t Show

Super Sk!nny Me

Super Sl!m Me

Honey S!ckness

Kate's Secret

Sharing the Secret

My Sk!nny Sister

For the Love of Nancy

Perfect Body

When Friendship K!lls

Dy!ng to Dance

The Karen Carpenter Story

Superstar: the Karen Carpenter Story

Just Ate

An An0r3xic's Tale

Sometimes I Dream I'm Flying

The Taste of Emptiness

Secret Life of Mary Margaret

Dy1ng to Be Perfect: the Ellen Hart Pena Story

Dy1ng in Plain Sight

Feed

Skins UK

Can anyone add more?

[mangle-my-mind]

I've been waiting for Greta Gerwig and Todd Haynes to discuss the Superstar->Barbie legacy :)

[starvingforattention18]

I NEED recommendations for triggering Ana movies and shows I feel like I’ve watched everything

Movies shows

Anything that’s not rlly about Ed’s but either mentions them just fits the vide or has a key plot line abt Ed’s I’ll mark with *

I’ve already watched (multiple times):

To the bone

Starving in suburbia

The red band society *

Paula (fyi it’s in Spanish)

Sharing the secret

When friendship kills

Little miss perfect

Perfect body

Black swan *

Everything now

Superstar: The Karen carpenter story

The best little girl in the world

Skins *

For the love of Nancy

Girl interrupted *

Dying to dance

A secret between friends

Supersize vs superskinny *? (If ykyk)

Thirteen *

And probably more I forgot about

If u can think of anything else pls lmk<33

[femmepathy]

superstar: the karen carpenter story

[rgr-pop]

My goal for the year was to watch & log 100 movies. Shorts count, didn't matter whether I had seen them before, but they can only count once for the year. I logged 117!

First & last watched: Ken Russell's Women in Love (1969)--the reason I cared about movies so much this year, just an obvious life-changer for me--and Ken Russell's The Rainbow (1989)--Westlin's suggestion for the perfect round out. Surprised to be surprised by how good it was. Great films! Totally on the program! Questions to this day unanswered! Let's go!

Shorts (everything short of Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story) watched: 16

Favorite shorts: Nuit et Brouillard (Alain Resnais, 1956) (decided this year one of my all-time favorite films); Un Chant d'Amour (Jean Genet, 1950); Fireworks (Kenneth Anger, 1947)

Next year my shorts watching will be more programmatic

Films I watched twice in 2023: Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (Todd Haynes, 1987) (another film I realized this year obviously belongs in my top ten--more specifically I decided finally that this is my favorite non-Texas Chain Saw film); Beau is Afraid (Ari Aster, 2023); The Nightmare Before Christmas (Henry Selick, 1993)

By decade: Before 1900: 0 1900 - 1910: 1 1910 - 1919: 1 1920 - 1929: 1 bro come ON what the FUCK 1930 - 1939: 1 im literally evil 1940 - 1949: 7 1950 - 1959: 3 1960 - 1969: 24 1970 - 1979: 14 1980 - 1989: 16 1990 - 1999: 17 2000 - 2009: 13 2010 - 2019: 9 2020 - 2023: 10

By nation/language roughly: uk/english: 6 us/english: 66 canada/english: 6 france/french: 10 italy/italian: 4 italy/france/french: 1 italy/english: 1 czechoslovakia/czech: 5 palestine/arabic: 3 soviet/russian: 2 russia/russian: 1 austria/german: 1 austria/french: 1 spain/spanish: 1 japan/japanese: 1 poland/yiddish: 1 poland/polish: 1 senegal/wolof: 1 brazil/portuguese: 1 sweden/swedish: 1 eur/farsi: 1 south africa/afrikaans: 1

numbers not adding up there but w/e

By director: Not sure if this is surprising or totally unsurprising, but in spite of my auteurial talk (and all the thematic/completionist plans I like to make), I very rarely watched more than two movies by the same director. I can't decide how I feel about this, nor do I know how to proceed this year given that my goal is to discover who my top five directors might actually be. How do you go about investigating that?

Overwhelmingly the director I watched the most was Adrian Lyne, with five films. I have a few more things to work on but I'm close to done with my shakedown/theory. Neither my favorite director nor favorite guy, I would say I probably 'enjoy' and 'personally get more out of watching' his films more than most. In second place, I watched three Kenneth Anger films--all shorts of course. I watched two films each by the following directors: Ken Russell, David Cronenberg, Stanley Kubrick, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Paul Schrader, Bernardo Bertolucci, Ti West, Todd Haynes, Michael Haneke, Jan Švankmajer (both shorts), and Billy Wilder (one of which being a war department documentary short).

I have mixed feelings about this approach (let me watch man movies if i I want to!) but a quick skim suggests I watched about 15 films directed by women (12%)--lower than expected and probably low for me typically. I always have a romance habit on the backburner so it's never hard for me to watch a lot of movies by women, but obviously my focus on revered directors I never previously wanted to spend time on has had an impact here, meaning I should make an effort with Great women directors in 2024 to keep that in check. I will also say that I specifically recall having a hard time getting my hands on things I wanted to watch by women in a few different cases, including by Great women directors (Barbara Hammer and Akerman), and especially also soviet women directors. There's an overlap here with difficulty accessing short films!

I'm not an active or thoughtful starrer, but these are the films I watched in 2023 that I've given five stars to:

Women in Love (Ken Russell, 1969) (upgraded from four after the year of appreciating it) Mandabi (Ousmane Sembène, 1968) Crash (David Cronenberg, 1996) Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (Todd Haynes, 1987) The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (Tobe Hooper, 1974) Night and Fog (Alain Resnais, 1956) Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1975) (demoted Teorema [1968] to four stars to prevent Salo is A Perfect Film deflation) Un Chant d'Amour (Jean Genet, 1950)

Least favorite films watched in 2023: Jojo Rabbit (Taika Waititi, 2019), Barbie (Greta Gerwig, 2023), All My Good Countrymen (Vojtěch Jasný, 1968), Zahrada (Jan Švankmajer, 1968), the one streaming true crime doc I watched that I then had to log (will not repeat in 2024)

Loved/treats for me: Barry Lyndon, Crossing Delancey, Unfaithful, The Cremator, The Night Porter, Cabaret, talking to people about Funny Games and realizing I love it more than I think I do

Recommended for the romance girls as a thank you for the good romance you have recommended me: Habibi (Susan Youssef, 2011)

Most incredible movie experience of the year by miles and I can only hope 2024 has something this good to offer: House of 1000 Corpses (Rob Zombie, 2003) anniversary screening my birthweek

The otherwise defining film of 2023 for me: Hostel (Eli Roth, 2005)

Onward! Back to work! On the Terror and Violence line! The Family is out there, comfortable, in relative peace…

[transmutationisms]

Do u have any thoughts to share about May December? 💭

hm i mean. it was good, not great, perfectly entertaining way to spend 2 hours. if you had to complain i think the obvious point would be that between the three leads, joe gets a bit shortchanged in terms of the balance of narrative focus, and it is a bit frustrating that his confrontation of gracie comes after so much prompting from elizabeth—melton's performance is standout, but the script isn't quite committed to letting his character earn that arc on his own terms. i remember a lot of reviews when it came out saying that the film wasn't moralising or wasn't passing judgment on gracie—i really thoroughly disagree lol and i'm not really sure why people think that. moments like the high school boy trying to show off for elizabeth, and her just laughing it off because he's a kid, or joe getting high and crying in his son's arms, seem p clear and even didactic to me. which, like, yeah it's a moral position i agree with but i think as a piece of cinema, the film is more interesting where it's sketching out the psychologies of its characters, and there are some missed opportunities imo with the way joe is written: we don't so much get him speaking on his own terms, like gracie and elizabeth, because ultimately the film itself is convinced that the only way someone could be in his position is by lying to themselves ("people see me as some kind of victim") and the only progression or arc presented for him is to, essentially, follow elizabeth's suggestion.

i do actually think there's some thematic continuity here with todd haynes's karen carpenter movie 'superstar', insofar as 'may december' is also interested in interrogating fame and infamy, and what drives us to make a tabloid story out of someone's abject misery. with carpenter too a lot of the coverage did take a specifically very moralistic tone, and was simultaneously so clearly motived by and capitalising off of people's desire to gawk. and whereas in 'superstar' haynes resists that sort of payoff by using the barbie dolls in place of emaciated bodies, in 'may december' there's a somewhat similar effect achieved by keeping the story so focussed away from the actual details of what happened—and by making elizabeth, who's often an audience proxy to ask these questions, pretty uncomfortably intrusive and self-serving at points. nothing about it, like, blew my mind, but yeah it was generally solid, and particularly anchored by three really strong lead performances imo.

[itsblosseybitch]

I know it’s a very simple edit, but I think this is my most inspired TikTok edit to date.